by DAR I A

Translated from the Russian by

W I LK E

MARIAN SCHWARTZ

arthur a. levine books

An Imprint of Scholastic Inc.

Text copyright 2012 by Daria Wilke

English translation 2015 by Marian Schwartz
All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint
of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920, by arrangement with Samokat
Publishing House, Moscow, Russia. scholastic, the lantern logo, and
associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
Scholastic Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission,
write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilke, Daria, author.
[Shutovskoi kolpak. English]
Playing a part / by Daria Wilke ; translated from the Russian by
Marian Schwartz.[ First American edition].
pages cm
Summary: Grishka has grown up in the closed world of a puppet
theater in Russia, but now that world seems to be falling aparth is
best friend needs an operation, financial difficulties are forcing people
out, his homosexual friend Sam, the jester, is leaving for Holland and
Grishka no longer knows what role he himself is playing.
ISBN 978-0-545-72607-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Marionettes
Juvenile fiction. 2. PuppeteersJuvenile fiction. 3. Puppet
theaterRussia (Federation)Juvenile fiction. 4. GaysRussia
(Federation)Juvenile fiction. 5. Identity (Psychology)Juvenile
fiction. 6. Russia (Federation)Juvenile fiction. [1. Marionettes
Fiction. 2. PuppeteersF iction. 3. Puppet theaterF iction.
4. GaysF iction. 5. IdentityF iction. 6. Russia (Federation)
Fiction.] I. Schwartz, Marian, translator. II. Title.
PZ7.W648398Pl 2015
[Fic]dc23
2014012002
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 15 16 17 18 19
Originally published in Russian as Shutovskoi kolpak
by Samokat Publishing House, May 2013
First American edition, April 2015
Printed in the U.S.A. 23
Book design by Sharismar Rodriguez

To Mama and Papa,

without whom there would have been no theatrical childhood,
and to Stanley Burleson,
without whom there would have been no book

contents

I.

Theater Kids

II.

The Puppet God

19

III.

Party Jacket

39

IV.

First Snow

57

V.

An Extended Intermission

73

VI.

Puppets Alive

87

VII.

Always in Greasepaint

107

VIII.

Salty Pears

121

IX.

The Jesters Cap

133

X.

More Powerful Than a King

155

Make way, everyone, make way!

Step asidehere comes the Jester!

I
Theater K ids

makes everything easy as pie. Smear it

on, and you feel confident. Think not? Just try it.
Over the makeup table, the light from the bulbs, which
are as round as tree ornaments, is trembling. Its as if the old
theater were going blind and squinting. Or winking at Sam
all of a sudden, agreeing with him.
The theater smells sharp, like expensive cheese, from
the open makeup box, and sweet, like a vanilla cookie,
from the beige powder more than half gone in the tin with
worn gilding.
reasepaint

Buskinsfancy leather boots with platform soles

swallow up Sams feet.
And buskins are for being taller onstage, Sam says,
as if I didnt already know that. Hes talking so matter-offactly, as if nothings happenedas if he hasnt just said
hes leaving for good.
Sams feet and toes, and the buskins too, suddenly smear
and blur, and the light of the lamps over the makeup table
dims, and something hot boils up in the corners of my eyes.
Whats wrong, Grish?
Are you a man or what? my grandfather would say, and
maybe hed even be spitting mad. Boys dont cry, Anton would
say. Youre being kind of weird.
But you can do anything in the theater if you live there.
Even cry, even if youre a boy.
Only Im not going to cryin front of him. I dont
want Sam to know.
To know how upset I am.
Sams face drifts, and now I cant see his wide eyebrows
or his eyes, which he still hasnt made up for the evening
performance.
Whats wrong?
Just a sec, Sam....
The theater opens all its doors wide and clears all its
thresholds so I wont trip and hurt myself. My eyes cant see

anymore, but I know Sam is watching me go. And his jazz

music races after me, tries to catch up, lift me over the
earth, and help me run away. Sam always listens to jazz
when hes putting on his makeupsoftly, so he wont
bother anybody.

Theres just one place in the theater where you can cry
without anyone seeing you. No ones going to pester you or
start asking phony worried questionsWho hurt you,
Grish?and you wont have to snarl backIll be the
one hurting the first person who tries!
Run past the old harpsichord with the fake candles, past
the room where the big sets are keptif the door is open,
a chill will run down your legsand slip past the womens dressing rooms and wardrobe.
And dart through a small door.
Thats it. Now dive into the space between the slenderarmed fairies and the puffy masks and sit down by the Jester.
Now, even if your face is wetits okay.
I sit there hating everyone: Sam for leaving, that Holland
place hes going to, my own mama and papa for not even
trying to talk him out of it, the whole theater for not caring,
and the people Sam cant bear any longer. And myself. I

hate myself most of all because Im crying like a baby, and I

dont know how Im going to go on.
The room where the puppets hang always smells of
wood, glue, the folds of their brocade dresses, candy wrappers, and...miracles. The only people who come in here
are the wardrobe people and the theater kids.
The theater kids are me and Sashok. The kids. Thats
what Albert Ilich, the theaters janitor, calls us.
I sit there feeling sorry for myselfuntil Im sick of it.
After all, it only seems as though Im here alone. With the
puppets, youre never alone. How can you feel sorry for
yourself in a room full of people?
Masks and full-size puppets hang on a stand right by
the door to make sure no strangers come in. The gray
Mouse King with the evil eyes and shiny, bulging nose, and
the pumpkin-headed fat man, and raggedy Baba Yaga. The
puppets hang there with their colorful painted faces, silk
ruches, and neat boots. Theyre all different; you wont find
two exactly alike.
Occasionally someones amazed that there are not just
puppets, but people and masks on the puppet stage as well.
A big puppet theater has room for everyone marionettes,
Punch and Judy, masks, and actors made up so you cant
recognize them.
Papa calls this combined theater.

In the back, forgotten by all, hang my favoritesthe

puppets from shows now gone from the stage. Sad Losharik
the horse, the Little Fairy with her slender arms and marvelous dress. The Tin Soldier looks sternly at you, standing
at attention. The pot-bellied Mouse from All Mice Love Cheese
looks on sympathetically. The Jester in his multicolored cap
gives you an amused look.
Oh, the Jester! With all that crying, I completely forgot.
Soon, the Jester will be mine!
Today Lyolik said theyre going to decommission The
Glass Slipper.
All the shows get decommissioned sooner or later
and so do the puppets.
I always dreamed of getting the Jester. Because I am a
jester. I tease the teachers in school. I talk to them in voices.
I make jokes about the other kids. Im Grishka the Pest.
To other people, Im a jester.
Like him, just like him. Sam is the Jester.
Thats what I always think when I take the Jesters hand.
His palm is smooth and cozy, and it rests quietly in mine.
Then the puppet tilts his head archly, so you can see his
hooked nose with the bump, and he winks at meI do
declare!and his eyes are clear, as if he hasnt been waiting here, backstage on the puppet stand, for a good hour to
go to work.

Sam, youre on! Vika, the assistant director, usually

shouts in her terrible, loud whisper, downward and sideways, when theyre performing Slipper.
And now Sam runs, throwing the netting from his
special black theater costume over his head, and grabs
the Jester by its controllerand immediately the Jesters
sinew-strings pull tight. His arm jerks awkwardly, and his
feet step out from the wings to a full house. At that moment,
the Jester actually becomes a little less alivehe becomes
an ordinary marionette on an ordinary stage. The scraps on
the Jesters cap flutterapple red, cornflower blue, and
gooseberry purple.
But the Jester laughs and singsand Sam dissolves
into him. The Jester hides Sam, as if he had never existed
and there are only the black eyes and rascally smiles of the
Jester, sculpted once upon a time by Lyolik, the theaters
puppet master.

Sams name is actually Semyon. But one day someone said

Sam, and the name stuck. Because Semyon, though quite
pretty, somehow isnt very theatrical. Even when you see
him offstage in the evening, after the show at the stage
door, hes obviously a Sam. Handsome and stylish. The scarf

wound nonchalantly around his neck, the turned-up collar

on his flight jacket, the checked velvet trousers, and the
round-toed boots. Sams the whole package. Onstage he
doesnt change in the slightest.
No, actually, he changes before he goes onstage. When I
was little, I tried to be next to Sam when it happened. I tried
not to miss the moment when he appeared from the dressing room to run to the stage entrance.
I couldnt tear my eyes away from him, trying to catch
the moment Sam transformed into someone else.
But I always missed that split second when he crossed
some invisible line on the floor of the passage leading from
the makeup room to the curtains black labyrinth.
All I saw was that someone else had taken up residence
in Sam, that he was now moving completely differently.
Even his palms, even the strong back of Sams head and his
flexible shoulders, seemed alien, like modeling clay. So
changed I didnt recognize them.
It was always awful for me to see Sam step out of the
backstage shadow into the light of the stage. I wanted to
reach out and touch him to be convinced that it was
really him.
Onstage, his face melts into hundreds of other faces
young and old, soft and sharp. Onstage, he knows how to
walk softly, stealthily, like a large, unpredictable cat, or

angularly and clumsily, as if each step costs him inhuman

effort. He knows how to fly onto the stage, barely touching
the floor, swathed in black fabric, as if he himself weighs
nothing. He knows how to make everything around him
beautiful, and even in the ugliest makeup he takes your
breath away.
Each time he plays a devil in one of the shows, I freeze
on the spot. Because Sam spins on his heels, spins as deftly
as a top, spreads his arms, and throws his head back. The
hem of his scarlet frock-coat unfurls like a flowerand
then suddenly he stops and laughsa deep laugh, from
his very core, that seems to make the air around him tremble; his laughter seeps into the wings, into everyone sitting
in the audience, and into me. It seeps, it works its way right
inside you, and everything inside you warms up, like after
you drink tea with honey. His laughter runs hot through
your veins, shoots straight through you, as if it were seeping
all the way down to your toes. It presses my feet down,
grounding me permanently.
Thats what Sam can do.
After all, Sam is the Jester. That I know. The most genuine, most super, most perfect Jester. The Jester is his puppet.
His role, which he plays better than anyone.
When I asked to have the puppet, I didnt know
about Holland.

I didnt know Sam would be leaving soon for good.

But now Im awfully glad I asked for the Jester. This way
Ill have something to remember him by.

The Jester is Lyoliks very best puppet. Even Lyolik says so.
Lyoliks a jester too, of course.
He was here before I was born. Before all the puppets
were born. He must be a hundred years old and hes seen it
all, so theres a story behind every word he says.
The door to the theater workshopto Lyoliksis
always open. It can be noisy and crazy outside, but cross his
threshold and youre in another, magical world.
As soon as you step on the cracked but sturdy steps
leading steeply downand stoop a little because theres
an old vaulted ceiling overheadyou catch the smell of
fresh paper, glue, linden and birch shavings, the chocolate
candies he always has here for tea, sharply sour paint
and hay, for whatever reason.
Lyolik is always sitting there, on a tall chair cleverly
positioned so that he can see both the people rushing
through the Moscow streets outside the window, hurrying
about their business, and the wide-open workshop doors
beyond which lies the actors perpetual pandemonium.

Lyolik smiles broadly, from ear to ear; his mouth works

independently; his brow is furrowed and ripples in waves;
his glasses slip all the way down to the tip of his big, hooked
nose; and, leaning over a puppet head, he looks like a fairytale hunchback, with hands hewn from an oak stump. All
his fingers are different, as if some inept someone, in making a puppet, had stuck on fingers from hand puppets
and china puppets, from rag-doll Punches and antique
wooden nutcrackers. His hands look clumsybut looks
can be deceiving. No one can carve the fingers for Cinderella
like Lyolik, or draw the squinting eyes of Puss in Boots,
or glue the hairs to the Tin Soldiers brows like Lyolik
anymore.

Earlier today we were sitting in his workshop blowing on

our tea. That was when Lyolik said The Glass Slipper was going
to be decommissioned. Before New Years.
But where will the puppets go? I asked. Where will
Cinderella and the snooty Queen Mother go? Where will the
Fairy and the Jester go?
Lyolik just shrugged. Where they usually do.
The actors take the decommissioned puppets home. For
instance, at home, in our hall closet, we have the bald King

10